NINE TO FIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 120, 22 May 1937, Page 19

NINE TO FIVE

THE LADDER OF SUCCESS

Have you the right attitude to your work? You must not only know your job but you must convey the impression to other people that you know it. A calm, quiet efficiency will win you the respect of your colleagues and inevitable promotion (states a writer in the "Cape Times"). Your manner on the telephone is important. Many young people leaving school and going into business have a lamentable ignorance of telephone technique. The result is that business firms who employ these juniors with bad telephone manners often give a first imprfession of inefficiency to the caller, who may be an important customer or a prospective client. Judging by the number and character of the complaints 6ne hears on this score, many firms in this country are losing business through delay resulting from the inefficient handling of the telephone. Initial clumsiness in the taking down of business messages, however, is more excusable than rudeness. With the remote and impersonal character of telephone conversations people, are only too apt to give way to irritation, forgetting that the impression they are making is just as great as if the caller were in the office itself.

Your chief will appreciate you if you make it a rule to ask him as few questions as you possibly can. When it is a matter of tracing somebody, in a distant part of the building, don't ask the boss to tell you how to get there—find'out for yourself.